I had a desire to go out and have a deep breathe, but I didn't do so since I was afriad that others would be worried about my "disappearance". Normally people would behave safely when they are in an unfamiliar place. Then, I brushed my teeth and washed my face. A self-contained room maybe quite luxury here.
We had our breakfast at 7:30 just a few steps from our rooms (in the same building). We were amazed because we saw nobody were in the small restuarant except us (then we know this happened very often throughout our trip). We had congee 粥, fried flour sticks 油炸鬼, and several dishes of vegetables and some sort of melon which were quite sour and spicy. I didn't ate very much since the taste was strong. (Then, we knew that taste was a local taste, we had some dishes like them in each meal afterwards).
We got into our coach (we had booked it for our entire trip for 10 days). We started our journey at 8:30. Miss Lam, the student who greeted us at the airport last night, were with us that day (she was studying tourism, so it was a good chance to practice). We drove out of Xi'an city, and we saw a plain surrounding us. I never saw such a wide open space. There were large wheat fields, as well as orchards. We drove past "Mountain of Black Horse" (Li Shan 驪山), there were fire towers 烽火臺 at the hill top as an alarm of attacks from other tribes in Zhou Dynasty. We also drove past Wei River 渭水, a well-known river in Chinese history. I was too tired and I had a little snap.
We listened to the introduction to the company from an official of the personnel department, and then we watched a long video tape, about its products and its cooperation with Boeing 波音. We were presented a plastic model of an aircraft by the official. Although the appearance could not compare with models in Hong Kong, we thanked him gracefully.
Then, we visited their huge factory which manufactured parts of aircrafts, but we could not see any very hi-tech machines. We only saw workers working with simple hand tools. Of course, I didn't know much about aircraft making. After that, we went to see some luxury coaches assembled by the company, which were comparable to the coaches in Hong Kong. Then, we went to Xi Fei Hostel Second Restaurant 西飛賓館第二餐廳 to have our lunch. Again, no other people were in the restaurant with us. We had altogether 22 dishes on each table (we occupied two tables), most of them were very sour or spicy, a challenge to our tongues.
We had tea, and there was something in the tea, which was a small piece of rock sugar 冰糖 and some pieces of Chinese herb called 杞子. There were Coca-Cola too. We used to have ice added to Coca-Cola in glasses, but this habit was not popular in Xi'an. They felt strange to be asked for ice cubes. Although the dishes did not suit us, we were full because there were too many dishes. (there was always an excess supply of food in our meals in our trip, we felt guilty of being so wasteful).
We thanked the officials there sincerely and left the company. It was lunch time and many many workers rode their bicycles to go for lunch. Hundreds of bicycles "flowed" along the road in one direction. Although the road was wide, it was full of bikes. Our coach was forced to stop and waited for the bike riders to ride pass us. Actually we waited for about 10 minutes! (there were over 20,000 employees in the company, and this piece of land owned by the company was actually a town: with schools, hospitals, residential area for employees and their families etc.. Including the families of the employees, there were over 50,000 people living in this "town"). This scene of bikes gave me the experience of being in a really big enterprise.
After that, we saw the model of the whole development area, it was nicely made, and we could see how large the area was. Then, we saw some of the hi-tech products, I must admit they were very hi-tech. We went to an air-compressor factory to have a short visit. We walked through corridors and watched the workers and machines through glass windows.
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| Buildings in the hi-tech industrial zone |
Then we came out of the factory and went back to our coach. The buildings in the area were modern-looking, even better than an industrial estate in Hong Kong. The streets were neat, wide and clean, the buildings were more high-rised, and there were road lamps. A fresh-looking area in Xi'an.
Since there were no barriers separating two lines of traffic on most roads, drivers often horned to warn the pedestrians or the drivers in the opposite lane.
We had our dinner at about 6 p.m., another meal of sour and spicy dishes. In Xi'an, the sun sets very lately, so after our dinner, the sun was still shining, just like 5 p.m. in Hong Kong. We then walked to attend a lecture on Chinese history. On our way, we saw many buildings of STU which were nice-looking. The paths had many trees beside them, one path was named "Green Shadow Road 綠蔭路", with a line of weeping willows 垂柳 on each side. We took some photos there. The library was very great, it was four or five storeys high, and the surface of it was covered by crawling rattan (攀藤). We saw many students studying on the grass.
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| STU library |
We arrived to "the sixth teaching building 教六樓" to attend a lecture. The lecturer welcomed us warmly. The classroom wasn't very big, just the size of a classroom in Hong Kong secondary schools. The room wasn't well-equiped, without fans. The lecturer talked very loudly about contemporary Chinese hisrory. The lecture lasted for more than 2.5 hours without a break, some of us passed paper sheets to each other to talk, and some played with their Tamagochi. Typical HKU students. There were also other students being with us in the classroom, and they looked very attended. Sometimes insects of unknown kinds flew inside the classroom, some of our girls were very uneasy.
The sky turned dark at about 8:30 p.m., so late! The lecture came to an end at about 9:40 p.m.. There were hardly any street lamps in the campus, and we were not very comfortable of walking in darkness. Although there were many people around, we were afriad that some of us would miss our way. I brought a torch with me, but when we were using it, I felt we were quite stupid, since other students in STU seemed to be indifferent about walking on dark paths. Mr. Tung, an official of the department of external affairs in STU who accompanied us throughout our trip, led us to an office to have distant calls to Hong Kong. Six of us followed him and called our families. After that, I led others back to the hostel, because the streets were dark and there was potential danger: some large metal lids covering underground sewage channels were missing, leaving large and deep holes on the ground. One had to be very careful when walking around. The building was quite near to our hostel, we could easily find our way while we reached TU Road.
When we were back to our rooms at 11 p.m., we found someone had tidied the room for us in daytime. Joe and I had a bath and watched TV, there was an hour of MTV's, all of the songs were about the reunification. Most of the singers were unknown to us, but we saw Ng Shin-Lin 吳倩蓮 appeared. The singers had good singing skills, and the melodies were good, but we didn't get used to the lyrics.
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